The air inside Entry hall 030 had the heavy, chilled moisture of an underground cave through which a river had run for ten thousand years.
Here, in the heart of the high-pressure nexus of the Ark, the stonework abandoned the delicate cut stone terraces of the upper courtyards and assumed the giant stone mass of deep-mine building. The ceiling was supported not by slender pilasters, but by twelve massive piers of green dark rock, each thirty paces in width and banded with rings of ancient, uncorroded naval bronze.
Between these pillars lay the mouth of the Great Cistern: a circular deep pit eighty deep-water lengths deep, ringed by a helical stairs carved into the living rock of the foundation. At the bottom of this gulf lay the great freshwater water drops veins. There, the heat difference between the cold deep-sea currents outside and the hot fiery keel below distilled pure, sweet water from the salt sea at a rate of one hundred and twenty thousand gallons every minute.
Qiao Ming stood at the edge of the bronze stone railing, holding his sounding line. He cast the eight-sided lead bob over the rim, letting the braided horsehair cord whisper through his calloused fingers as it plunged into the darkness.
